xfree86 a (most pages contain the letter a somewhere:)
will return valid results. My guess is that this is just some sort of fluke. Microsoft wouldn't do anything to block the pages of their competitors... that's just ASKING for another DOJ lawsuit. They're not iditots, and they're not necessarily evil.
I'd actually expect this to be the other way around ---- Konqueror blocking MS's site, or something. Microsoft's not childish enough to do this...
And yet, we still have no USB printing fix. 10.3 broke support for most users for USB -> IEEE1284 converters, leaving owners of older printers up a creek...
Many people will use vinyl simply for the reason that it does sound better than a CD. While the sound from a vinyl may not be as accurate as a CD, most people will find that they rather enjoy the distortion caused by the vinyl when compared.
News flash, folks. Many people perfer vinyl to CD... if you have a good record, expensive player, you'll notice that vinyl does sound a lot better as long as those two conditions are met. Of course, the beauty of a CD is that it sounds virtually the same no matter what. It would have been an intersting comparision to compare the CD you made to the 'real' CD sold by the record company. They probably sound quite different, and you may find yourself perferring the one you made.
My guess is that you preserved about 75% of the vinyl 'artifacts' when you initially digitized the LP. When you ripped it to MP3, you lost most of those artifacts. Remember, MP3 is a lossy format, and tries to eliminate 'unnecessary sound', and may have deemed the vinyl hisses, pops, etc. as unnecessary, and dropped them in the encoding. In the process, some 'good' sound is lost too. Once again, it would be a really neat idea to go get the 'real' CD, rip that to MP3, and compare. I find that MP3 has better luck encoding things that are already digital.
Lastly, you may even be experiencing trouble ripping the CD. Some of the more flaky rippers don't do a great job ripping CD-Rs, and degrade sound quality as a result. Using a good ripper like Paranoia will give you excellent quality at the expense of being painfully slow. If in dobut, rip to a WAV, and see how that compares.
Most of the professional level lighting controllers do not run windows. In fact, I'd wager that PC-based lighting control is in the severe minority.
Most lighting consoles use an embedded OS and proprietary software. Which is okay, because DMX lighting control takes very very little processing power. For those of you who don't know, DMX is the standardized interface/protocol for lighting control, and has been around for quite a while.
That being said, you don't really want something too complicated, as it adds too many points of failure. No matter what the OS you're running, you can't risk a crash/kernel panic before or during a show.
In addition, you don't NEED a sophisticated OS for lighting control. It's not rocket science, and even the weakest of computers can handle it without breaking a sweat.
The console I use probably has less power than an Apple ][. It has no hard drive, and the only moving part is the floppy drive which can be used to move configurations between consoles. Plus, it's completely silent (which is important in this business). Also, inputting commands with a mouse and QWERTY keyboard is absolutely inefficent for lighting control especially if you're mixing on the fly. Having specific buttons and sliders for certain common tasks is a necessity. We also have a submaster board which gives you 120 sliders (one for each light). It is incredibly convienent.
If you've got thousands of lights and don't change your performance often, a PC-based solution is for you. Otherwise, a pre-built, proprietary solution is for you. Open isn't important. You could easily hack together a solution in linux, as DMX is incredibly easy to control... the true cost always lies in the hardware. You'll end up spending more using a PC based solution than a dedicated console.
I have no clue about the incubation periods, though I do know that it was not uncommon to die in mere hours after the first symptoms appeared.
Now, in my theory, what made the pandemic successful was that it was highly contageous (as all flu variants are), and that once you got symptoms you were beyond hope, though you were contagious for much longer than that...
One of Apple's best kept secrets is (and always has been) the astonishing power of AppleScript.
By adding a few simple functions and classes to your program (read: there's no reason for a developer NOT to implement applescript in their program), all programs can talk with each other, control one another, etc. through a common, scriptable interface.
This interface is applescript. It's a natural-language scripting language (almost as easy to learn as BASIC).
The concept is simple, each program has a 'library' of functions the program can provide to the user or other functions, as well as controls which are input-only (ie. an interface for skipping to the next song in iTunes). Any program can access these functions, and pass them to other programs through a ridiculously easy language.
I've always wished that a similar interface would exist between platforms, and even over a network. Imagine how great it would be if we could transparently tell our computer at home to stream us some music at our office (sorry I can't think of a better example...).
Actually, I believe the original GNOME project aimed to do something very similar to what I described above, however, it failed it's key original goal primarily as a result of hasty development to compete with KDE. And it was a real pity, as GNOME had so much more potential than KDE based upon the original goals of the project.
No. You can already have something very similar. Find it here (Their clame to fame is getting a working copy of win98 in just under 8mb, which not even Linux can top)
Will it do image slicing like Adobe's ImageReady does?
If not, it will remain virtually useless to web designers. I just don't get why on earth the Gimp doesn't have this feature, as it is incredibly simple and incredibly useful.
(Imageready is bundled with photoshop, and is essentially a photoshop modified for web-graphics work)
Oh.... the UI still needs a lot of work. It's a giant step forward, but still sucks compared to most commerical packages.
It seems that SCO makes no distinction betweeen unix software made by them and by other companies.
I have a copy of Sco OpenServer which I paid for, and legally own. (And, yes, I still use it in a production enviornment... it hasn't failed me in over 10 years)
According to the license, it looks like even I need to buy one of these licenses, even though I'm running SCO's own software.
The only reason that x86 has endured on the desktop is that it was rapidly adopted by the masses in the early 80s, and being intelligent companies, intel and IBM built upon the platform while maintaining FULL BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
This doesn't make it the best for most uses. It just makes it the most practical for a general purpose computer. But not necessarily an embedded device.
In the 90s, new, better architectures were introduced, but x86 endured mostly because of the large installed user base. PowerPC, Alpha, and SPARC, if given enough funding during development, would have easily toasted any of intel's x86 offerings. DEC had 64-bit chips before intel had pentium.
Many new platforms designed specifically for embedded devices such as MIPS and ARM (only ones which come to mind) have developed over the last few years. Backward compatibilty is not an issue here.
Look at TiVo. They used a 66mhz PowerPC in their 1st generation boxes because they ran fast and efficently, and without active cooling, and it was open and cheap (PPC is a VERY open platform). There is no way that an x86 at this speed could have performed the complex tasks TiVo needed it to.
Are the dissidents communists, or are those oppressing them communists?
Your statement makes very little sense. Communism is an economic system - and an economic system has very little to do with freedom of speech.
(Actually, communism may have more of an effect upon freedom of speech, but in the case of communism as an economy, it actually HELPS it)
China's government is communist (though it's becoming arguable with the humungous amount of foreign trade going on). However, it is also a dictatorship (and a somewhat fascist one at that) - a dictatorship certainly supresses civil liberties.
India is communist by popular election. No system of government which supresses personal freedoms as China does would be acceptable to the masses. And you certainly don't see these violations of civil liberties in India today.
Looks like you're still feeling the ill effects of Senator McCarthy (America's worst politian. Ever)
CVS is overly bandwidth and cpu-intensive both client-side and server side. I believe that there are various forks of it which are more efficent.
But, I digress. CVS was not designed for this. Rsync was designed almost percisely for something like this. It only transferres the parts of the file which have been modified, and compresses it as well.
But, why not simply use installshield or a similar tool like all other windows developers and just release periodic updates (which fits the model for windows software, which, IMO is quite diferent than the linux model (make many releases and many patches, while windows and MAC lean twoard making a few periodic releases, only patching where there is a severe flaw).
I'm not saying that one model is any better, i'm just saying that you need to keep consistancy.
So, with this, more or less, Itanium may or may not be out of the big picture. From what we're seeing now, it appears as though Itanium will remain a high-end enterprise class chip.
But you have to wonder... what on earth was Intel thinking? Ever since its announcement, intel has hinted that Itanium would eventually migrate down to the low-end desktop market.
But, it wasn't x86 compatible by a longshot, and had no intentions of ever being hardware-compatible with plain old x86 CPUs. Without backward compatiblity, there was close to zero chance of intel ever capturing the desktop market with it (it was a completely new architecture. there had been no software written for its new instruction set to date).
But then you realize that intel broke their most sacred tradition by breaking backwards compability. Suddenly, "intel-compatible" wasn't "intel-compatible" anymore. Moving from x86 to Itanium would be like moving from x86 to SPARC/Alpha/PowerPC.
And SPARC, Alpha, and PowerPC are all more powerful than the current Opteron chips, and cheaper by several orders of magnitude (specifically PowerPC).
In other words, it would be more likely for everybody to migrate over to Apple that it would be to move to Itanium. And it would be cheaper too.
With these latest announcements, I'm hoping that intel has finally adopted the x86-64 bandwagon and cooperated with Microsoft and AMD. (Imagine if WinXP-64 worked on two architectures.... and the compatibility nightmares it would cause...)
Either way, the scores are as follows: Sun/DEC - 6/10 Have been using 64-bit for years. Yet, nobody seems to want it. IBM/Apple: 8/10 - Successfully brought 64-bit to market, but launched without a supported full-fledged 64bit OS AMD - 10/10 - Openly allowed developers to develop with the x86-64 sim years ago. Launched x86-64 before anyone else backed with full Linux support, and windows support in open beta. Successfully penetrated consumer, mobile, and enterprise markets simultaneously. Intel - -5/10 (yes, negative) - Created an expensive proprietary system with no backward compatiblity, and is cumbersome to work with. It flops. They still don't have a 64-bit desktop processor. Their only successes are made by copying AMD.
Linux.... on the desktop. That in itself is quite unusual nowindays:)
Anyhow, I think it would be prudent to post examples of desktops which do NOT mimic NextSTEP/Win95/OSX. Linux needs originality, something which it is seriously lacking (and always has)
Re:Your easy answer is, alas, too easy.
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 1
I completely understand that Operation Olympic would have been a much worse course of action, and that the Japanese themselves committed far more atrocities than the US did.
However, before the bombs were dropped, Japan was willing to surrender under the stipulation that they got to keep the emperor. We refused, and demanded unconditional surrender, and nuked them.
Then they surrendered. We let them keep the emperor anyway.
I'm also saying that the way we handled the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was dishonorable. In Afghanastan, we warned the civillian population which cities we would bomb 24 hours before the bombing.
We could have done the same thing to Hiroshima, and possibly could have significantly reduced the death toll. Same thing for Nagasaki - bombing the two cities just DAYS apart from each other was also a bit harsh.
Now, on to the USSR. Sure, a cold war may have been inevitable, but, when Stalin heard about the nukes we developed, couldn't you imagine that he'd be just a little pissed off (and frighened) at his closest ally for hiding such a powerful weapon?
Re:Awesome
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Who modded this as funny?
This is something which most americans need to ponder seriously. Especially when you consider voting a trigger-happy president such as Bush into office.
If any other country committed such an atrocity against another as the United States did to Japan, we would have World War 3 (it DID cause the cold war, but that's another story). Okay... Japan unsuccessfully attacked a naval base. We nuked two cities without warning, killing thousands.
Not exactly something that deserves +5 funny.
Re:Only so much carbon...
on
Space Burial
·
· Score: 1
If 5 billion people die, we're going to have to worry about a lot more than a commercial space program.
Believe me, losing 85% of the world population would probably take precedent over anything like what you're talking about.
I fully agree with you. I also have a Latitude LS, and absolutely love it for its size and portability. While it's certainly not the most powerful machine on the planet, I find myself using it quite a lot.
And I find myself not missing the CD and floppy drives very much. With 802.11, I simply share the CD and floppy drives in my desktop over the wireless lan. Or I just connect the external drive.
I can certainly attest to the convienence of this small laptop (note that it is NOT uncomfortably tiny or underpowered like some other laptops. It's similar to the 12" powerbook). Being able to toss it into a breifcase or backpack is awesome, not to mention that's quite durable, so I don't really have to worry about it being tossed around. Once you use an ultraportable, you will never go back to a 5+ pound laptop. If you find yourself lacking the performance of a heaver laptop, buy youself a cheap desktop. Very few people need a powerful machine on the go (and a powerbook would be perfectly suited for those that do, specifically graphic artists).
Now, On to the 12" powerbook which I got to work with for a bit. It came out about 2 years after Dell discontinued the LS. It was almost the same size, but thicker and slightly heavier (still a feather compared to most). But, the big advantage. It has a built in cd burner (or DVD-R if you pay the extra bucks). I'd daresay it is the perfect laptop for most users. That is, if it weren't for the astonishing amount of heat it created. I am not kidding when I say that this thing would burn you if you left it on your lap long enough. I hear the problem has been fixed in the new model.
Basically, what it comes down to is that you're not going to need an incredibly powerful laptop. I'm still happily using my Latitude LS at 450mhz and Win2k without a problem. For things like word, powerpoint, and even the occassional photoshopping session, it's perfectly fine. I save everything else for my desktop machine. And I anticipate using it for a few years more to come.
If you really need power, go get a powerbook. As many have said, the biggest disadvantage to a mac is the lacking library of games for MacOS. Since you're not going to play games very well on ANY laptop, I don't see this as an issue. All of the other power-hungry software you would ever want is available for the mac. The 15" and 17" powerbooks are very nice, and while it's over the 6 pound mark, trust me when I say that it's heavy because it has to be. If it were much lighter, the weight of the screen when tilted backward would cause it to tip over.
Oh, and get an extra AC adapter (or a few!), an external mouse (those new ones with retractable USB cords are cool), and if your laptop doesn't have any form of removable storage built in, get a USB memory key. Just remember, keep it light!
Slashdot Mirror
Well... searching for something like
:)
xfree86 a (most pages contain the letter a somewhere
will return valid results. My guess is that this is just some sort of fluke. Microsoft wouldn't do anything to block the pages of their competitors... that's just ASKING for another DOJ lawsuit. They're not iditots, and they're not necessarily evil.
I'd actually expect this to be the other way around ---- Konqueror blocking MS's site, or something. Microsoft's not childish enough to do this...
And yet, we still have no USB printing fix. 10.3 broke support for most users for USB -> IEEE1284 converters, leaving owners of older printers up a creek...
It's pretty sad when you consider that his nose is more reliable than the Space Shuttle....
Actually, you bring up an interesting issue.
Many people will use vinyl simply for the reason that it does sound better than a CD. While the sound from a vinyl may not be as accurate as a CD, most people will find that they rather enjoy the distortion caused by the vinyl when compared.
News flash, folks. Many people perfer vinyl to CD... if you have a good record, expensive player, you'll notice that vinyl does sound a lot better as long as those two conditions are met. Of course, the beauty of a CD is that it sounds virtually the same no matter what. It would have been an intersting comparision to compare the CD you made to the 'real' CD sold by the record company. They probably sound quite different, and you may find yourself perferring the one you made.
My guess is that you preserved about 75% of the vinyl 'artifacts' when you initially digitized the LP. When you ripped it to MP3, you lost most of those artifacts. Remember, MP3 is a lossy format, and tries to eliminate 'unnecessary sound', and may have deemed the vinyl hisses, pops, etc. as unnecessary, and dropped them in the encoding. In the process, some 'good' sound is lost too. Once again, it would be a really neat idea to go get the 'real' CD, rip that to MP3, and compare. I find that MP3 has better luck encoding things that are already digital.
Lastly, you may even be experiencing trouble ripping the CD. Some of the more flaky rippers don't do a great job ripping CD-Rs, and degrade sound quality as a result. Using a good ripper like Paranoia will give you excellent quality at the expense of being painfully slow. If in dobut, rip to a WAV, and see how that compares.
Most of the professional level lighting controllers do not run windows. In fact, I'd wager that PC-based lighting control is in the severe minority.
Most lighting consoles use an embedded OS and proprietary software. Which is okay, because DMX lighting control takes very very little processing power. For those of you who don't know, DMX is the standardized interface/protocol for lighting control, and has been around for quite a while.
That being said, you don't really want something too complicated, as it adds too many points of failure. No matter what the OS you're running, you can't risk a crash/kernel panic before or during a show.
In addition, you don't NEED a sophisticated OS for lighting control. It's not rocket science, and even the weakest of computers can handle it without breaking a sweat.
The console I use probably has less power than an Apple ][. It has no hard drive, and the only moving part is the floppy drive which can be used to move configurations between consoles. Plus, it's completely silent (which is important in this business). Also, inputting commands with a mouse and QWERTY keyboard is absolutely inefficent for lighting control especially if you're mixing on the fly. Having specific buttons and sliders for certain common tasks is a necessity. We also have a submaster board which gives you 120 sliders (one for each light). It is incredibly convienent.
If you've got thousands of lights and don't change your performance often, a PC-based solution is for you. Otherwise, a pre-built, proprietary solution is for you. Open isn't important. You could easily hack together a solution in linux, as DMX is incredibly easy to control... the true cost always lies in the hardware. You'll end up spending more using a PC based solution than a dedicated console.
I have no clue about the incubation periods, though I do know that it was not uncommon to die in mere hours after the first symptoms appeared.
Now, in my theory, what made the pandemic successful was that it was highly contageous (as all flu variants are), and that once you got symptoms you were beyond hope, though you were contagious for much longer than that...
One of Apple's best kept secrets is (and always has been) the astonishing power of AppleScript.
By adding a few simple functions and classes to your program (read: there's no reason for a developer NOT to implement applescript in their program), all programs can talk with each other, control one another, etc. through a common, scriptable interface.
This interface is applescript. It's a natural-language scripting language (almost as easy to learn as BASIC).
The concept is simple, each program has a 'library' of functions the program can provide to the user or other functions, as well as controls which are input-only (ie. an interface for skipping to the next song in iTunes). Any program can access these functions, and pass them to other programs through a ridiculously easy language.
I've always wished that a similar interface would exist between platforms, and even over a network. Imagine how great it would be if we could transparently tell our computer at home to stream us some music at our office (sorry I can't think of a better example...).
Actually, I believe the original GNOME project aimed to do something very similar to what I described above, however, it failed it's key original goal primarily as a result of hasty development to compete with KDE. And it was a real pity, as GNOME had so much more potential than KDE based upon the original goals of the project.
No. You can already have something very similar.
Find it here (Their clame to fame is getting a working copy of win98 in just under 8mb, which not even Linux can top)
Will it do image slicing like Adobe's ImageReady does?
If not, it will remain virtually useless to web designers. I just don't get why on earth the Gimp doesn't have this feature, as it is incredibly simple and incredibly useful.
(Imageready is bundled with photoshop, and is essentially a photoshop modified for web-graphics work)
Oh.... the UI still needs a lot of work. It's a giant step forward, but still sucks compared to most commerical packages.
You idiot! You just stole your bank's security camera
Wow. Adobe's going to have a hard time with this one.
Wait a sec... whose side ARE they on?
True....
He's british to boot, and judging by his sense of humor, he's most definitely read Adams' work.
Not to mention that an actor such as him DESERVES a good role as this. He's just been casted in too many horrible roles in bad movies.
It seems that SCO makes no distinction betweeen unix software made by them and by other companies.
I have a copy of Sco OpenServer which I paid for, and legally own. (And, yes, I still use it in a production enviornment... it hasn't failed me in over 10 years)
According to the license, it looks like even I need to buy one of these licenses, even though I'm running SCO's own software.
Or am I missing something?
The only reason that x86 has endured on the desktop is that it was rapidly adopted by the masses in the early 80s, and being intelligent companies, intel and IBM built upon the platform while maintaining FULL BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY
This doesn't make it the best for most uses. It just makes it the most practical for a general purpose computer. But not necessarily an embedded device.
In the 90s, new, better architectures were introduced, but x86 endured mostly because of the large installed user base. PowerPC, Alpha, and SPARC, if given enough funding during development, would have easily toasted any of intel's x86 offerings. DEC had 64-bit chips before intel had pentium.
Many new platforms designed specifically for embedded devices such as MIPS and ARM (only ones which come to mind) have developed over the last few years. Backward compatibilty is not an issue here.
Look at TiVo. They used a 66mhz PowerPC in their 1st generation boxes because they ran fast and efficently, and without active cooling, and it was open and cheap (PPC is a VERY open platform). There is no way that an x86 at this speed could have performed the complex tasks TiVo needed it to.
Wait a sec...
Are the dissidents communists, or are those oppressing them communists?
Your statement makes very little sense. Communism is an economic system - and an economic system has very little to do with freedom of speech.
(Actually, communism may have more of an effect upon freedom of speech, but in the case of communism as an economy, it actually HELPS it)
China's government is communist (though it's becoming arguable with the humungous amount of foreign trade going on). However, it is also a dictatorship (and a somewhat fascist one at that) - a dictatorship certainly supresses civil liberties.
India is communist by popular election. No system of government which supresses personal freedoms as China does would be acceptable to the masses. And you certainly don't see these violations of civil liberties in India today.
Looks like you're still feeling the ill effects of Senator McCarthy (America's worst politian. Ever)
CVS is overly bandwidth and cpu-intensive both client-side and server side. I believe that there are various forks of it which are more efficent.
But, I digress. CVS was not designed for this. Rsync was designed almost percisely for something like this. It only transferres the parts of the file which have been modified, and compresses it as well.
But, why not simply use installshield or a similar tool like all other windows developers and just release periodic updates (which fits the model for windows software, which, IMO is quite diferent than the linux model (make many releases and many patches, while windows and MAC lean twoard making a few periodic releases, only patching where there is a severe flaw).
I'm not saying that one model is any better, i'm just saying that you need to keep consistancy.
This is great news for both NASA and the Bush administration, as they have now located their first Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Oh... false alarm.... wrong type of mass...
So, with this, more or less, Itanium may or may not be out of the big picture. From what we're seeing now, it appears as though Itanium will remain a high-end enterprise class chip.
But you have to wonder... what on earth was Intel thinking? Ever since its announcement, intel has hinted that Itanium would eventually migrate down to the low-end desktop market.
But, it wasn't x86 compatible by a longshot, and had no intentions of ever being hardware-compatible with plain old x86 CPUs. Without backward compatiblity, there was close to zero chance of intel ever capturing the desktop market with it (it was a completely new architecture. there had been no software written for its new instruction set to date).
But then you realize that intel broke their most sacred tradition by breaking backwards compability. Suddenly, "intel-compatible" wasn't "intel-compatible" anymore. Moving from x86 to Itanium would be like moving from x86 to SPARC/Alpha/PowerPC.
And SPARC, Alpha, and PowerPC are all more powerful than the current Opteron chips, and cheaper by several orders of magnitude (specifically PowerPC).
In other words, it would be more likely for everybody to migrate over to Apple that it would be to move to Itanium. And it would be cheaper too.
With these latest announcements, I'm hoping that intel has finally adopted the x86-64 bandwagon and cooperated with Microsoft and AMD. (Imagine if WinXP-64 worked on two architectures.... and the compatibility nightmares it would cause...)
Either way, the scores are as follows:
Sun/DEC - 6/10 Have been using 64-bit for years. Yet, nobody seems to want it.
IBM/Apple: 8/10 - Successfully brought 64-bit to market, but launched without a supported full-fledged 64bit OS
AMD - 10/10 - Openly allowed developers to develop with the x86-64 sim years ago. Launched x86-64 before anyone else backed with full Linux support, and windows support in open beta. Successfully penetrated consumer, mobile, and enterprise markets simultaneously.
Intel - -5/10 (yes, negative) - Created an expensive proprietary system with no backward compatiblity, and is cumbersome to work with. It flops. They still don't have a 64-bit desktop processor. Their only successes are made by copying AMD.
Didn't the Soviet Union try this in the early 1990s?
:)
Needless to say, they only did it once
Linux.... on the desktop. That in itself is quite unusual nowindays :)
Anyhow, I think it would be prudent to post examples of desktops which do NOT mimic NextSTEP/Win95/OSX. Linux needs originality, something which it is seriously lacking (and always has)
I completely understand that Operation Olympic would have been a much worse course of action, and that the Japanese themselves committed far more atrocities than the US did.
However, before the bombs were dropped, Japan was willing to surrender under the stipulation that they got to keep the emperor. We refused, and demanded unconditional surrender, and nuked them.
Then they surrendered. We let them keep the emperor anyway.
I'm also saying that the way we handled the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was dishonorable. In Afghanastan, we warned the civillian population which cities we would bomb 24 hours before the bombing.
We could have done the same thing to Hiroshima, and possibly could have significantly reduced the death toll. Same thing for Nagasaki - bombing the two cities just DAYS apart from each other was also a bit harsh.
Now, on to the USSR. Sure, a cold war may have been inevitable, but, when Stalin heard about the nukes we developed, couldn't you imagine that he'd be just a little pissed off (and frighened) at his closest ally for hiding such a powerful weapon?
Who modded this as funny?
This is something which most americans need to ponder seriously. Especially when you consider voting a trigger-happy president such as Bush into office.
If any other country committed such an atrocity against another as the United States did to Japan, we would have World War 3 (it DID cause the cold war, but that's another story). Okay... Japan unsuccessfully attacked a naval base. We nuked two cities without warning, killing thousands.
Not exactly something that deserves +5 funny.
If 5 billion people die, we're going to have to worry about a lot more than a commercial space program.
Believe me, losing 85% of the world population would probably take precedent over anything like what you're talking about.
I fully agree with you. I also have a Latitude LS, and absolutely love it for its size and portability. While it's certainly not the most powerful machine on the planet, I find myself using it quite a lot.
And I find myself not missing the CD and floppy drives very much. With 802.11, I simply share the CD and floppy drives in my desktop over the wireless lan. Or I just connect the external drive.
I can certainly attest to the convienence of this small laptop (note that it is NOT uncomfortably tiny or underpowered like some other laptops. It's similar to the 12" powerbook). Being able to toss it into a breifcase or backpack is awesome, not to mention that's quite durable, so I don't really have to worry about it being tossed around. Once you use an ultraportable, you will never go back to a 5+ pound laptop. If you find yourself lacking the performance of a heaver laptop, buy youself a cheap desktop. Very few people need a powerful machine on the go (and a powerbook would be perfectly suited for those that do, specifically graphic artists).
Now, On to the 12" powerbook which I got to work with for a bit. It came out about 2 years after Dell discontinued the LS. It was almost the same size, but thicker and slightly heavier (still a feather compared to most). But, the big advantage. It has a built in cd burner (or DVD-R if you pay the extra bucks). I'd daresay it is the perfect laptop for most users. That is, if it weren't for the astonishing amount of heat it created. I am not kidding when I say that this thing would burn you if you left it on your lap long enough. I hear the problem has been fixed in the new model.
Basically, what it comes down to is that you're not going to need an incredibly powerful laptop. I'm still happily using my Latitude LS at 450mhz and Win2k without a problem. For things like word, powerpoint, and even the occassional photoshopping session, it's perfectly fine. I save everything else for my desktop machine. And I anticipate using it for a few years more to come.
If you really need power, go get a powerbook. As many have said, the biggest disadvantage to a mac is the lacking library of games for MacOS. Since you're not going to play games very well on ANY laptop, I don't see this as an issue. All of the other power-hungry software you would ever want is available for the mac. The 15" and 17" powerbooks are very nice, and while it's over the 6 pound mark, trust me when I say that it's heavy because it has to be. If it were much lighter, the weight of the screen when tilted backward would cause it to tip over.
Oh, and get an extra AC adapter (or a few!), an external mouse (those new ones with retractable USB cords are cool), and if your laptop doesn't have any form of removable storage built in, get a USB memory key. Just remember, keep it light!
Well... from the looks of it, this guy will never have to worry about RF interference.